In a blast from the past I took the infamous cassette tape in my Autodesk historical collection and purchased a cassette tape to MP3 converter to see if the 34 year old cassette had anything good on it after all this time, and who was the voice on the tape.
The cassette was still good! Low and behold it had someone I had not expected, Autodesk founder John walker narrating the 30 minute cassette tape and at the end talking about product support and bug reporting. Upon listening I was transported magically back to 1986.
Enjoy!
Download Learn AutoCAD Cassette 1986 AutoCAD 2-5.mp3 (43884.0K)
The text transcript of the tape thanks to Patrick Emin – French Autodesk community manager.
”Hi, I’m John Walker, president of Autodesk Incorporated. We put together this tape to help you get started. The thought of you as you learn and come to master AutoCAD, you’ll find it delivers the power of a million dollar CAD system on your computer. Before we dig into the package, I’d first like to thank you for choosing AutoCAD.
You spent your hard earned money on the product of our labors and we take this very seriously. We’re privileged by your choice of AutoCAD, a key tool you use in your work, since you will be investing your valuable time and learning AutoCAD and applying it to your job. We’re going to do everything we can to provide you with the best possible product. We consider your choice of AutoCAD as the beginning of a working partnership because AutoCAD isn’t an unchanging product like a drafting machine.”
Why “infamous”? What other software company of the epoch communicated so directly with its customers, with department heads speaking of their responsibility to customers? I wrote every word I spoke on this tape and nobody (to the best of my recollection) edited what I said. The music was added after the voice track was recorded in a Sausalito recording studio, and I agree it sounds kind of tacky, but hey, it was the eighties!
John Walker
https://www.fourmilab.ch/
https://twitter.com/Fourmilab
https://www.ratburger.org/
I have that same cassette in my desk drawer. I have never tried to play it but it is in great condition.
This is awesome! Thank you for posting it. I started AutoCAD in 1989 and after 25+ years of design drafting I now work at Autodesk. I’ve always been a fan of what the founders accomplished.
John,
It is an honor to get a comment from you on this blog, thank you. It was great to hear the tape and I’m sure that I can speak for many, thank you for starting all of this for us at Autodesk and all the millions of customers and partners over the years.
I meant “infamous” only because this cassette tape had been discussed a fair amount on Twitter and everyone wondered who was on the tape.
Thank you,
Shaan
Holding onto it in pristine condition, that’s awesome!
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard John’s voice before which is odd given have been using AutoCAD, on and off, since the mid 1980s (with a big gap till mid 90s) and read ‘The AutoCAD Bible’
I’ve put up a post on Ratburger.org, the discussion site I administer, with some background about this cassette and its production:
https://www.ratburger.org/index.php/2020/02/14/voices-from-the-past/
Ratburger.org has an international audience, no advertisements, and no subscription fees. It was named after an Autodesk product we dreamed up in November, 1984 but never shipped.
https://www.ratburger.org/index.php/frequently-asked-questions/
You’re welcome to join, but note that this is not an Autodesk/AutoCAD—oriented site; I doubt that many members even know of that part of my career.
Thanks so much Shaan and John, for many of us, this doesn’t sound like History, but more like yesterday. For our French readers, please see the full transcript: http://www.blog-cao.com/article/histoire/les-voix-du-passe/
This is very cool, thanks for sharing Shaan. I started using AutoCAD (v2.?) during my first year of college in 1986. I’m sure there was one of these cassettes floating around the engineering dept at the time. Now going into my 13th year here at Autodesk…
https://otter.ai/s/m8ojraplRKGYpHBe-NLGfQ
It’s 2020, why not go full geek here 🙂 What an awesome post, thanks so much sharing!